by Joshua James
Tomas turned stupidly in the direction she was pointing. LeFay was just calculating her odds of getting back to him with her enhanced speed when Ace tackled him out of the way.
The two of them rolled out into the street as the fighter tore past, the edge of the street where Tomas had been kneeling torn to shreds. Both checked themselves to make sure they hadn’t been shot.
“You two done wrestling?” LeFay said over her shoulder. She’d already spotted a Shapeless trying to sneak up behind her. She hit it with a grenade round. “Because we got a ride to catch.”
Twenty-Four
Glass shards crunched under LeFay’s boots as she approached the mall entrance. Tomas and Ace crunched along behind her.
LeFay sensed the movement of the Shapeless inside as they started to become aware of her. She’d deal with them in a second, but first she had to make sure that whatever was in here was all she was fighting.
“We need to seal off this entrance,” she said.
Ace took out a charge, jumped up, and stuck it to the ceiling above the entrance. He set the timer for five seconds, then ran and looked for cover. It took Tomas two seconds to realize what had happened, leaving him three to find cover. LeFay didn’t bother.
Once Ace’s charge exploded, it brought the ceiling down on the entrance, including part of the floor above. It sealed the way in, but it had also blocked a possible exit in the process.
Ace admired his handiwork. “We’re definitely in it now!”
LeFay was about to approve of his handiwork as well when she heard a series of loud screeches from inside the mall. She could see more signatures converging on the blast. “We need to move, or we’ll get overwhelmed.”
It only took a few moments for LeFay to locate the Aero-5 right where her contacts had described it, dead center in the mall’s wide-open middle. Hot red with gold highlights, it looked like the gaudiest thing on thrusters. According to her internal HUD, there were roughly six Shapeless between them and their prize, though the alien signatures were on the move. They were agitated.
They were also unavoidable.
“How many?” Ace whined when she told them.
“Relax. They look to be on the move. We should be able to avoid some of them.” LeFay didn’t actually believe that, but Ace wasn’t the kind to calm down on his own.
LeFay sat with her back to a covered railing that overlooked the two subterranean floors beneath the one she stood on. Above her were two more floors, but she was focused on the bottom one, where the ship was located.
The middle of the mall was an open circle, where you could see the top floor from the bottom. Hanging above it all was a glass ceiling that let in the seemingly endless sunshine of Vassar-1. It was an uncomplicated but beautiful design.
“How are we going to get past those things?” Tomas asked.
“You aren’t,” LeFay said as she stood up. “I will. You stay here.” She looked over the edge of the railing. “I’ll be back up here with the ship. Just don’t die in the meantime.”
“Easier said than done,” Ace said.
“Yeah, no kidding,” LeFay said. She jumped off their floor and free-fell down two stories, landing with a loud crack on the lowest level as the tiles fractured beneath her. Her augmented legs supported the impact, but it couldn’t make the landing draw any less attention.
She would love to just hop in the ship and make a run for it, but the arrangement of the Shapeless made that impossible. At least two were right next to it, almost guarding it. She looked up and cupped her hands. “A little help, boys?”
She didn’t think she’d need to tell them that, but here they were.
A moment later, super-heated bullets began raining down on the Shapeless in the center of the mall.
LeFay dodged the bullets from above, and the flailing blade-lined limbs of three Shapeless. She wouldn’t call it easy, but with the help of her heat sensors and her brain enhancements, she was able to split the process of observing and calculating her movements, which usually served to keep her alive.
To Ace and Tomas two floors above, she had no doubt that it looked like she was superhuman. She wasn’t. She was just more than human.
One Shapeless got close to biting her shoulder with its razor-sharp, needle-like teeth before she forced it to swallow a grenade round. She doubted one round would kill it, but the blast did force the Shapeless to stagger and fall. That was one less to deal with on the way to the souped-up Aero-5.
She spun around just in time to avoided getting stabbed by another Shapeless. With no hesitation, LeFay grabbed the alien who’d just tried to stab her and let loose an electric charge through her arm. She’d already learned that it took five seconds to generate the heat needed to truly kill one, and she didn’t have that kind of time. She gave it two seconds, and then gave the creature a kick in the chest. It stumbled back, screeching like a dying animal.
Two down. There was one left between her and the ship, which LeFay thought odd, because she’d originally detected six. Where had the other three gone?
LeFay dodged, bobbed, and weaved as the last Shapeless, seemingly quite determined to chop her up, extended five different tendrils with ends like the tips of swords, swinging them wildly. What she was looking for was an opening, but the alien’s erratic movements made it hard.
Though she didn’t feel it, sensors registered damage to one of her arms. There was no time to assess how bad the damage was. Instead, she spun out of the way of another attempted cut and a hail of gunfire from above, while simultaneously reloading her grenade launcher. It took way too long, which told her all she needed to know about the damage to her arm.
She finally got it loaded at the last moment and sent a well-placed shot into the crazed Shapeless’ central mass. It flew backwards, and just like that, her pathway was clear.
LeFay started to run for the Aero as she glanced at her injured arm. She could see frayed wires. It must have sliced into one of her power conduits. She rolled her sleeve down. The last thing she wanted was for people to see just how little human was left in her.
She was only a few steps from the ship when she heard sustained gunfire above. LeFay looked up, expecting to see Ace and Tomas firing at something, but then her heat sensors zeroed in on the source. She picked up about five humans closing in on the pair of them. They must’ve been Oblivion cultists, and they weren’t alone. Alarms went off in her HUD, and she realized there were three more coming for her there on the bottom floor.
The Aero was a luxury hopper. It was meant to go fast, not to stand up to gunfire. Rather than risk an errant shot hitting the Aero-5, LeFay spun around and charged at the three coming for her. As she closed the distance, she fired a grenade round, hoping to hit them before they knew what happened. She couldn’t do this for long before the Shapeless she’d put off would be back in her way.
The blast took out two of the cultists instantly, but it also blitzed her sensors, making her blind as she rushed forward. Unfortunately for LeFay, the final bastard was either a good shot, or she’d just burned through all her good luck. She took two shots to her belly a moment before she grabbed the remaining cultist by his neck and broke it.
She staggered back and looked down at the damage. A steady flow of the black oily liquid that served as her blood seeped through her fingers as she clutched her gut. She killed the pain receptors that she could as she kicked the dead cultist once for good luck before she spun around again and rushed for the Aero-5.
The Shapeless she’d hit with the electric shock was back on its feet. How hard would another second have been? she asked herself. But it was still staggering and slow, and she managed to dive into the Aero, her stomach feeling like it was on fire, and close the cockpit hatch while the Shapeless was still a dozen feet away.
“Piece of cake,” LeFay told herself. Then she looked up as a dark shadow fell over the skylight above.
Twenty-Five
Ace crawled to the only cover he could find, behind a couple o
f trash cans. They weren’t going to stop any bullets, but at least they obstructed the cultists’ view of him and Tomas.
Ace tried to look out from around his trash can. He was able to for about a second, and saw two bald cultists with red blood smeared across their faces, clad in body armor. “Shit, it’s those herald bastards,” he called to Tomas.
Tomas was in a slightly better position, with the corner of a wall next to a shoe store to use as cover. “Oh, good, old friends,” he said.
A couple of bullets sent both of them scurrying back for cover.
“We need to move!” Tomas yelled over the overwhelmingly loud, echoing gunfire that filled the mall.
“Bullshit,” Ace said. He took out a grenade. “They’re the ones moving.” He pulled the pin and positioned himself to chuck it overhead, towards where he saw the heralds.
Then something caused the light coming through the glass skylights above the mall to flicker.
Ace stood up and threw his grenade just as the roof collapsed. He stared dumbly, right when he should have been ducking for cover, and instead watched as the remains of an AIC fighter burst through the skylight and then smashed through the top two floors opposite where they were standing. A huge chunk of the rear fuselage separated on impact and careened across the open center of the mall, crushing the attacking herald cultists.
“Well, there’s something you don’t see—”
A large explosion threw Ace off his feet and sent him tumbling through the air. Some part of his brain explained to him that the fuselage assembly had been filled with unstable fuel that he’d managed to detonate with his grenade. Another part of his brain, the part that was currently mush thanks to colliding with the mall’s far wall, didn’t care.
Ace lost a moment of time, then awoke to find blood coming out of one of his ears. He reached up and found that half of it was missing. “I just keep getting uglier,” he muttered. He was pretty sure he’d lost at least one tooth as well.
He climbed to his knees and looked through the smoke that was billowing in front of him where the fuselage had exploded. “Tomas?” he croaked. He didn’t see the big Marine anywhere.
“What?” came a strained reply.
Ace looked around for a second, trying to locate where the voice had come from. “Where the hell are you?”
“Down here, asshole.”
Ace looked over the railing. The explosion must have sent Tomas flying over it, onto the floor below. Lucky for him, the design of the mall meant each successive floor jutted out a little further than the last. Still, it looked like he’d hit the railing down there. His lip and nose were busted open. “You don’t look so good,” Ace said.
“That makes two of us.”
Ace felt around the ground at his feet. “I can’t find my gun.”
“That makes two of us,” Tomas said again, and laughed at his own joke that time. Then he coughed up blood. He didn’t look so good. He must have hit the railing hard on his side. Ace wondered about internal injuries.
“We need to get down to that ship,” Ace said. He struggled to stand on his wobbly legs. Then he heard screeches nearby. Out of the wreckage of the fighter, Ace saw that one of the heralds’ bodies was twisting and turning as it morphed into a Shapeless. It slowly dragged itself clear. “I thought fire was supposed to kill these things, not make them madder!”
He suspected that the others were Shapeless as well. This one must have somehow been shielded from the worst of the blast. Apparently Shapeless got lucky breaks, too.
“Nice Shapeless,” Ace said. “You just stay there.”
For a moment, the Shapeless seemed to hesitate. Maybe it understood him. Then it screeched again and charged at him.
Ace spun around and started to run in no particular direction. He cast his gaze around himself for something he could use as a weapon. Something. Anything.
Who am I kidding? It’s time to get crazy.
“Stay down there, Tomas,” he shouted as he ran for the railing, willing himself not to stop and think about what he was doing. “I’m about to come to you!”
He was two steps from the railing when the cockpit of the Aero-5 lifted into view. LeFay looked at him calmly from the pilot’s seat.
“Get in, dipshit,” she said, or at least, that’s what Ace got from reading her lips. She motioned back behind her. Ace looked to the hatch right behind the cockpit. Tomas was hanging out of it. “Need a lift?”
Ace was about to ask about the easiest way to do it when the Shapeless behind him screeched again. Screw it, he thought. He jumped up on the railing and unceremoniously leaped at Tomas with his arms open wide.
Rather than catch him, Tomas backed into the hatch. Ace flew through it, smashing the top of his head on the bulkhead as he did so, and landed flat on his back.
Tomas stood over him. “Did you really think I was going to catch you?”
LeFay took the Aero-5 up through the glass skylight opening on the roof, conveniently torn open by the AIC fighter.
“How about that?” Tomas said.
“What?” Ace asked.
“You didn’t fly one, but you still managed to be in a crash of one.”
“Funny guy,” Ace said, sitting up.
Out of the frying pan and into the fire, they emerged into a still-raging air battle above Vassar-1.
Hovering just feet above the mall roof, LeFay turned to her two passengers, black liquid spilling out of her mouth. “Get out.”
“What?” Tomas asked.
“Get out. Now!”
“No, we’re with you the whole way,” Ace protested. “We’ll help you get Clarissa—”
He shut up when LeFay pointed her grenade launcher straight at his head.
“Look, dipshit, we don’t have time to argue. Your ride is done.” LeFay coughed up some more black liquid. “It’s not debatable,” she added as she wiped her mouth.
“You’re hurt. There’s no way you’re making it out of there alive,” Tomas said.
“Wasn’t planning on it,” LeFay said. “Which is why you boys get out here.”
Twenty-Six
“Ada? Ada?! Come in! Eject! You need to eject!” yelled Ben into his headset. But her systems must’ve been fried, because she didn’t respond.
Ben blasted his way through two more false UEF Shapeless ships as he kept his eye on Ada. To his relief, even though she didn’t respond to him, her ejection pod flew out of her crippled ship. On instinct, Ben marked the point where her pod landed in his ship’s log and memorized the coordinates.
She survived, Ben. She’s okay.
The situation was hairy. Ben had known the fight would be bad, but it soon became clearer that they were tremendously outnumbered. The hell-gel missiles would have to be tested, and fast. “Blue Three, how close are you?”
“We’re starting our attack run now,” Three replied.
Ben squinted upward, trying to see what was happening. The AIC fighter and his wingman were swooping in, trying to evade the big Atlas near-space cannons and land a missile on one of the pre-ordained attack vectors.
If the gel worked as advertised, it should quickly spread from the initial impact point. They had nowhere enough to coat the dreadnought, so they were going to be focusing all their runs on one of three locations.
“Missiles away,” Blue Three reported.
“Watch out for that crossfire!”
“They’re shooting their own—”
The comm link died. Ben had a feeling he knew what had happened.
“They don’t care about hitting their own,” he said, “so don’t let your guard down just because you’re engaged. Chances are, those anti-aircraft cannons are waiting for you to get engaged so they can blast both you and your bogey out of the sky.”
“Copy that, Blue Seven. These UEF bastards really are evil. How can they just shoot down their own pilots?”
Ben would have loved to explain, but he didn’t have the time or the inclination. “They’re barely human.”
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A pair of UEF fighters swooped in on Ben, but he quickly got the better of them. They were clearly untrained, so he had no trouble picking them off. They didn’t know evasion techniques or how to zero in on an agile enemy; nor did they use shields.
As easy as it was at first to shoot down the Shapeless UEF fighters, Ben only felt hollow victories. Many of the ships that went down simply transformed before hitting the ground, and became enemies for those on the ground and the civilian population to deal with. And there seemed to be an endless stream of them.
“Blue Five, you’re up,” Blue One said. “Stick to that primary. Maybe I’m crazy, but it looks like it’s working.”
“Holy hell, is it working,” another pilot said. “Will you look at that? It’s eating away half the hull by the front turrets.”
“She’s still flying, so let’s not get too excited,” Ben said.
“How… how is that possible? How can that steel plating be giving out under a little hell gel?”
“Don’t ask the gods for favors when you’re getting your prayers answered,” Blue One said. “It’s working as advertised. That’s all we need to worry about.”
“Missile away!” Blue Five announced. “Right on top of the first one.”
“My God, I can practically see right into the thing.” There was a pause. “I honest to God don’t understand how this thing is still flying.”
“Give it time,” Ben said. “The more we hit the same spot, the worse it’ll get.”
“Sounds like your cue, Blue Seven.”
Damn right it is. Ben suddenly felt a swell of anger. Anger at what the Oblivion had taken from him. Anger at what they’d done to his friends and family.
He set his sights on the fake UEF Atlas and spooled up his throttles to full power.
“That’s not my father’s ship. That’s not my father’s legacy. That’s some damn perversion that I’m going to end.”
